


Fire and Ice

by darlinghogwarts, MaddyHughes



Series: Stars, Sea, Sky [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Crack, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Murder Husbands, Nonverbal Communication, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Romance, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-12 00:36:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7913557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlinghogwarts/pseuds/darlinghogwarts, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddyHughes/pseuds/MaddyHughes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During their first winter on the run together, Hannibal and Will get snowed in. What happens next is inevitable, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlinghogwarts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlinghogwarts/gifts).



Snow. A cottage on a lake, surrounded by trees. Sometimes there is no sound for days but the ice settling into the cracks in the trees, making them creak and moan.

The road is buried in drifts ten feet high; the only way in or out is by snowmobile, and Will and Hannibal don’t have one. They came here in the autumn, when the lake was teeming with fish, the trees bright flames of changing leaves, and Will set about getting the place ready for the winter. Servicing the generator, plugging the gaps in the walls and around the windows, endlessly chopping wood and stacking it. Hannibal, for his part, hunted and foraged. He stalked the woods for mushrooms and nuts, shot a deer and butchered it on the forest floor with his hands steaming with blood. In the storehouse by the side of the cottage he hung corpses of pheasants, rabbits, wild turkeys. He made a smokehouse, stocked with cedar wood. In the kitchen, he salted and canned, while Will filled their freezer with trout and salmon and bass.

Gradually, Hannibal’s expensive scent has been replaced by pine resin and wood smoke. And Will starts to smell more like the forest and the fresh scent of the stream near their cottage.

Hannibal smelled the snow before it came. But Will saw the first flakes fall. The two of them sat in the window and watched the woods fill up with white drifts. Hannibal resisted the Robert Frost quotation; Will spoke it aloud.

It snowed for days. It’s still snowing now. The lake is frozen solid. They have everything they need.

They’ve healed from their battle and their fall, focused only on survival and each other. They hardly notice their scars. Their lives are peaceful, solitary, and slowly the layers between them are stripped away. It’s like their masks and armors being taken off. They step out of their person suits and explore not only each other, but the parts of themselves that they have hidden away for so long.

Some days they don’t speak until late afternoon, but when they do, it’s picking up a conversation they started days before, or the previous night before falling asleep. Sometimes they spend the whole day talking. Sometimes they start a new conversation in the middle, because they have been thinking about the same thing, without speaking.

And sometimes they don’t need words at all to communicate. They become so aware of each other that one knows what the other wants before any words have even been spoken. The way they move around the cottage, the way they fish, hunt, kill or make love—it’s a dance. A _pas de deux_ they’ve been engaged in for years, in one way or another, for life and for death.

One thing they don’t talk about is their tacit contest about who can piss the farthest in the snow.

Hannibal starts it.

The water in the cottage’s pipes and in the toilet cistern has frozen overnight so in the morning Will stumbles outside, bleary and shivering, his feet shoved into boots. He’s just finishing when Hannibal comes out to stand beside him, and sends a stream arcing over the white, a good few inches beyond the mark that Will has made.

Will glances at his lover, is about to say something about the weather, when he sees the look of barely-contained triumph on Hannibal’s face.

 _Oh, I see_ , thinks Will.

He says nothing.

But the next time Hannibal goes outside, there is a yellow mark in the snow at least a foot beyond the one Hannibal’s made.

Hannibal pushes. Focuses his mind and his energy. Falls short.

Hannibal comes back inside. He doesn’t say a word.

Fresh snow. Another morning. Pipes still frozen. Will is still winning. Before breakfast, Hannibal knocks the snow from his boots, turns to Will and opens his mouth to say something.

Will quirks an eyebrow. Hannibal closes his mouth, and turns away. He thinks of the years he is older than Will. He thinks about how they touched and loved each other last night, naked under layers of blankets. In bed Hannibal is virile, full of desire, not showing his age with his lover, not falling short in performance or pleasure.

But in the snow…

More falls overnight, and Will sets an old tin plate against a nearby tree. Bootprints in the snow mark the starting point. The morning is quiet, and in the cottage Hannibal, washing his face with water heated on the woodstove, hears the distinct sound of liquid pattering on tin plate.

Will comes into the cottage whistling.

Hannibal misses the plate. Falls short; reaches the distance, but misses the target. Will hits it every time.

 _This is all I’ve ever wanted for you, Will_ , Hannibal thinks as he tries to aim. _For the both of us_.

It never works. He must try harder. Why is Will so good at it?

Will, veteran of the Louisiana police force, motherless only son of a fisherman, a childhood spent in tents and campgrounds, listens for the telltale sound of piss hitting tin and doesn’t hear it. He smiles.

That afternoon, it’s too cold to snow. The temperature drops twenty degrees; thirty. The sky is a piercing blue and the very air is cutting sharp. Will goes out to get more wood for the stove and when he comes in, his hands are so numb that he fumbles the logs and drops them on the floor.

Hannibal rises silently. He takes Will’s hands and strips off his gloves. Hannibal draws Will’s hands underneath his sweater to warm on his bare chest. The cold hardens his nipples but he presses closer. Warm lips against chilled ones. A hot tongue parting Will’s mouth. He breathes life into his shivering lover like Pygmalion kissing his beloved statue, Aphrodite’s blessing, and walks them both backwards to the sofa in front of the fire.

He does not stop kissing, licking, sucking, thrusting, until Will is gasping from the heat and both their naked skin is slicked with sweat.

As Will gets up, briefly, from their shared warmth to add another log to the fire, he sees that barely-contained look of triumph on Hannibal’s face. He’s earned it; Will is satisfied to grant it. Will comes back to Hannibal and curls around him, exhausted.

The orange light of the fire flickers on the peaks and valleys of Hannibal’s body. Will trails his hand absently over him and thinks about another Robert Frost poem.

_Some say the world will end in fire/Some say in ice._

This is the end of their world. The culmination and meaning. He never wants to be anywhere else but here and now.

The next morning, Will wakes and it feels warmer. His breath doesn’t puff into clouds when he gets up. The cold snap has broken, for the present. Hannibal has already been up, and half a pot of coffee is already gone.

As Will pours a cup, Hannibal comes back in. He stamps the snow from his boots and goes straight to the kitchen table. He pours himself coffee and drinks it scalding hot. Pours himself some more. And then a large glass of water. Another.

When Hannibal goes outside again, Will sits at the table, silently laughing. Apparently Hannibal didn’t prove himself enough last night after all. He waits to hear the sound of liquid striking tin.

It doesn’t come.

He bites his lip. It’s a silly competition. He didn’t mean to make Hannibal feel bad.

Hannibal returns. He kisses Will on his warm cheek with cold lips, and goes about making breakfast for both of them.

After the bacon and eggs, Will stretches and goes outside, meaning to remove the tin plate. The sky is impossibly blue. Snow pillows the boughs of the trees and sparkles on the ground, every one of the billions of flakes unique. It’s as if the world has been made anew for them.

On the white page of snow, written carefully and flawlessly in yellow, is Hannibal’s italic script:

_I love you._


	2. Alternative Ending 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't resist this ending too.

After the bacon and eggs, Will stretches and goes outside, meaning to remove the tin plate. The sky is impossibly blue. Snow pillows the boughs of the trees and sparkles on the ground, every one of the billions of flakes unique. It’s as if the world has been made anew for them.

On the white page of snow, written carefully and flawlessly in yellow, is Hannibal’s italic script:

_I win._


	3. Alternative Ending 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...I couldn't resist this one either.

After the bacon and eggs, Will stretches and goes outside, meaning to remove the tin plate. The sky is impossibly blue. Snow pillows the boughs of the trees and sparkles on the ground, every one of the billions of flakes unique. It’s as if the world has been made anew for them.

On the white page of snow is a caricature of Will’s face, drawn in yellow.

Will gazes at it for a while. Then he goes to get some more tin plates, and nail them to every tree.


End file.
